Lucid Sympathy

 Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817–1878), On the Banks of the Oise, 1864, Metropolitan Museum of Art

"...They'd stood together in the Metropolitan Museum looking at a small picture by Daubigny, a painting of a village along a river's edge at dusk seen from across the water, light and peacefulness so miraculously captured it produced in her elation. ...(he) took her hand and said that from whatever he read or studied, all  he wanted was the power to describe how a human being could arrive at the lucid sympathy this man must have felt for what he saw. A lucid sympathy."

This passage is from Union Atlantic, by Adam Haslett. "A lucid sympathy". I have been thinking about the phrase for days. Lucid sympathy for the natural and emotional world expressed through art is shamelessly out of style, isn't it?

I don't particularly like this style of French painting (I mistrust the seductive ease of it, which I suspect says more about me than it) and I don't even know if this is the painting the author is referring to. But the lucid sympathy  of Daubigny? Yeah, I get it.

 I like this book. A young author of absurd accomplishment. Gorgeous phrasing and  use of language, keen observations and passages that capture the lucid sympathy he must feel towards the world, despite evertyhing. I find myself reading phrases over and over just for the sheer joy of them. (His observation that education has moved "from enlightenment to the grooming of pets" is priceless.)